Aloft

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Fly like a falcon/into the future.

Aloft

Fly like a falcon/into the future.

This movie never takes flight. I took off…about half way into the film. I figure if a filmmaker (Claudia Llosa wrote/directed) deliberately makes an obscure movie filled with goofy spiritualism that doesn’t work…lots of symbolism and a new agey vibe…you’re already at two strikes. Then you take two great actresses, but have them play characters we don’t care about it…it becomes an obscure, pretentious mess.

It was great seeing Jennifer Connelly in a starring role. She’s great in Pollock, A Beautiful Mind, Requiem for a Dream, House of Sand and Fog, Little Children,Mulholland Falls, to name a few.

Melanie Laurent has been impressing me the last few years. Her best was Beginners, but she was solid in Inglorious Basterds and interesting in the horrible Enemy.

The film takes place in the future, and the snowy surroundings create nice atmosphere. The movie does flashbacks, although it takes you awhile to realize that.

Connelly has two sons. One has a life-threatening disease and as a last resort, she takes him to a healer.

Her other son Ivan is a bit on the bratty side. It doesn’t help us care for his character when as an adult, he’s just as bratty. He yells at his wife for letting a reporter (Laurent) give her a disc of footage on the documentary she’s making about his mother.

As a kid, Ivan always had a falcon with him, and he’s made a career out of working with the birds.

Yet when he was a boy, his falcon crashed into a faith healers sculpture. This leads to the falcon being shot down, the boy not being healed, but Nana (Connelly) realizing she possesses healing powers (although I’m not sure why if her touch healed one boy, it didn’t help with her sick son).

It would’ve been nice if her hands could’ve fixed this flawed script. The falcon is the lucky one. It wasn’t relegated to any horrible lines.

This picture had a confusing narrative, poor editing, and aside from decent cinematography, nothing going for it. It leaves you feeling as cold inside, as it looks outside in the snow.